


Isolated House

by wheel_pen



Series: Loose Gems [27]
Category: Lie to Me (TV), Original Work
Genre: F/M, Slavery, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-15
Updated: 2015-05-15
Packaged: 2018-03-30 14:45:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3940753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheel_pen/pseuds/wheel_pen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A man who has lived alone in a magical house for years finally gets a companion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Isolated House

**Author's Note:**

> The bad words are censored; that’s just how I do things.   
> Inherent in slavery and other forms of subjugation are dubious consent, unhealthy relationships, and violence.  
> I hope you enjoy this original work, which was inspired by many different stories.
> 
> Visual reference:  
> Caleb: Tim Roth  
> Lily: Kelli Williams

            It was a typical morning for Caleb. His alarm went off at 8:30, a soft chiming sound following the gradual brightening of the clock that eased him gently from sleep—he could’ve also had a subtle aromatherapy scent, like the spicy woods or tangy ocean, to help invigorate him in the morning, but he had turned off that function after finding that it gave him disturbingly vivid dreams right before waking. After shutting off the alarm, he lay in bed for a few more minutes, luxuriating in the idea that he didn’t _have_ to get up now, if he didn’t want to. He made it a point to remind himself of these privileges on a regular basis. Before too long, however, he was reminding himself of his need to be responsible and stick to a schedule, and he pushed the covers back and rolled out of bed.

            The bedroom was a little nippy and he grabbed a sweatshirt that had been draped over a chair and tugged it on over his t-shirt as he padded into the next room and woke up his laptop. Per usual, the overnight weather conditions had been recorded in his Excel graph, and he wasn’t surprised to see a heavy frost on the ground when he looked out the window. It was “late fall,” as he called it, and the snows would soon be here.

            Caleb wandered out into the main room, out of habit noting what had changed in the night. The dining table had been cleared of any mess from his supper the night before, the DVDs he had left scattered across the floor in front of the fireplace were now back in their rack, and the throw last seen wadded up in the corner of the couch had been straightened, folded, and draped over its back. He crossed the living area to the kitchen, passing in front of the large floor-to-ceiling windows as he did so. Again, he made a point of stopping at a specific spot and gazing out on the vast, frosted, featureless landscape—there had never been a change in it besides the particular type of precipitation on the ground, not a bird, not a weed, not a bit of litter, just grass at best, which was currently yellowing in decay beneath its frosty coating.

            He proceeded to the kitchen, first mixing up a pot of tea before allowing himself to glance at the mail. The electric kettle was set to heat his water around the time his alarm went off, so it was nice and hot when he wanted it. He preferred tea at breakfast and coffee in the afternoon, he’d found, and he reflexively double-checked that the coffee maker was loaded and ready to go at 3pm precisely. He didn’t like to rely _too_ much on routine, though, as it sometimes sucked the fun from life. To that end he’d left himself a note on the coffee maker suggesting he have a hot cocoa today—the machine made both, quite tastily.

            Caleb put two pieces of bread into the toaster oven and carried his pot of tea and a mug back to the dining table. It was almost the last of the bread, so he added the item to the grocery list pinned to the bulletin board in the kitchen. It was the only thing written on this piece of paper, though there had been a lengthier list the day before; sure enough, the items Caleb had requested then were now awaiting him in the fridge and freezer—fresh peaches, canned pears (softer than fresh ones), chocolate chip cookie dough cubes, black olives stuffed with feta cheese (his New Food of the Week), whole milk. Deliveries were pretty reliable overnight, but it never hurt to double-check.

            While he waited for the bread to toast and the tea to steep, Caleb finally allowed himself to collect the mail from the desk under the bulletin board. There were several items and it took him two trips to transport it all to the dining table on the other side of the room, where he preferred to eat. Before he could properly examine it, he retrieved his toast, spread it with butter, drizzled it with honey, and finally carried it over to the table as well. This part of the routine was comforting to him—he always had toast with butter and honey on Wednesdays. There were just so many choices, really, that he felt he needed _some_ way of managing them or he would be overwhelmed.

            Caleb poured out his first mug of tea and began eating his breakfast as he looked through the mail. He received three daily newspapers and several weekly and monthly publications, a handful of which had arrived today. There was also an array of catalogs, for clothing, food, art supplies, and the category of intriguing but generally unnecessary items known as “gifts.” It was perhaps a little silly to get paper catalogs when the complete selection was easily available online these days, but he found that he enjoyed browsing through them, marking things he wanted, changing his mind, changing it back. He allowed himself one completely silly and frivolous item a week, generally of the hedgehog bookend or genuine Baltic amber paperweight sort; this week it might be a gift basket of tasty snacks from the catalog he now leafed through, but he would wait until Friday to decide.

            The packages were the most exciting pieces of mail, however. His new flannel shirts had arrived just in time, given the weather, and he was quite excited about the five new books in another box—the reading shelf in his bedroom had gotten pleasingly low again, which meant he could indulge in new purchases. He shouldn’t have gotten those new DVDs, though, he chided himself, not with the pile he had yet to watch. At one point—some years ago now, not long after he had first come here—he had gone on a bit of a feeding frenzy, obtaining books, DVDs, and CDs like there was no tomorrow. It had taken him a long time to work out from underneath that pile, with the older items seeming increasingly “stale” as he saw them sitting there day after day; now he tried to keep the “getting” impulse in better check. Still, no one was perfect. The last box contained some art supplies he’d ordered, packaged and labeled as the company did in the outside world; his shirts had come the same way, sealed in their LL Bean-stamped box. The books and DVDs had come in plain, unmarked boxes, however, with no packing materials, though the tops were sealed with tape. Such small curiosities had long ago ceased to intrigue him, however.

            Caleb had almost finished the last of his toast when there was a soft but distinct _thump_ from the other side of the house. Unaccustomed to noises of any sort besides the occasional refrigerator hum, his head snapped up immediately and he stared towards the kitchen, his mind rushing to come up with an idea. When it couldn’t, he got up to investigate.

            Nothing seemed amiss in the kitchen itself, and Caleb turned slowly to stare at the doorway beside the desk. He never went through that doorway; there was no point, the doors in the hallway beyond it were locked.

            At least, they always had been.

            Hesitating every step, Caleb headed for the doorway—and reached it just as someone _else_ was heading _out_. They were both quite startled—Caleb probably more, as it had been a long time since he’d seen another person in the flesh.

            He gaped for a moment, several moments actually, before he finally attempted to speak to the abashed newcomer. Then he had to clear his throat and attempt to speak again.

            “Hi,” he finally said.

            “Hi,” the woman replied shyly.

            “Um…” His grandmother’s training kicked in. “Would you, er, like a cup of tea?”

            “Yes, thank you,” the woman replied in a pleased tone.

            “Right.” Then he tried to remember how to make one, which was surprisingly difficult. Water in the kettle, turn the kettle on, get down a mug—wait, he could have just poured her some from his own pot on the table—but that seemed so far away, and he didn’t want to take his eyes off her in case she disappeared. “Um, what kind of tea would you like?” he asked, beginning to pull bag after bag out of the cupboards. “I think I’ve also got some—um—“

            “Oh, this would be fine,” the woman assured him quickly, selecting the first kind she saw.

            Quickly he heaped some of the dried leaves and additives into a diffuser, making more of a mess than usual. “Um—so—there you are,” he said, when the tea was finally steeping.

            “Thank you.” She cupped the mug in her hands, waiting for it to brew, and glanced around the room. “So, um, where _are_ we?”

            “Oh, well, we’re—um—we’re _here_ ,” was all he could think to say. “I mean, um, you know, _where_ isn’t really discussed. Can’t go outside anyway, so…”

            “We can’t go outside?” the woman repeated, with some disappointment.

            Caleb had a sudden sinking feeling. “Well… no, there’s no doors. Um, aren’t you okay with that?”

            “Oh, well… sure, I guess,” the woman replied, not very convincingly. There was an awkward pause while she took a sip of her tea.

            _She can’t leave_ , Caleb though desperately. She couldn’t leave, not when she had just arrived. “I mean, well—didn’t they say it was indoor-only?” he asked.

            “Well, I guess I thought… there might be _some_ outdoors,” she admitted, looking out the large window at the uninviting yard. “Don’t you ever want to go outside?”

            “No, I guess not,” Caleb told her, after thinking it over for a moment. “I never really cared for the—well, obviously, since I’m _here_ —for the outdoors, I mean.”

            “Oh.” The woman nodded. “Does anyone else live here?” she asked after a moment.

            “No, just me.” Caleb started to put the tea back in the cupboard.

            “That sounds very lonely,” the woman observed with sudden interest. “How long have you been here by yourself?”

            “Seven years,” Caleb replied. “Seven and a quarter. I came in the summer. The rainy season.”

            The woman wandered closer to the window and Caleb followed her. “So what kind of weather do you get here?”

            “Well, nothing you’d _want_ to go out in, really,” he admitted. “Rain, or snow, or fog, or if it’s dry it’s terribly windy or cold. This is a weather station,” he said proudly, pointing out a gadget stuck to one corner of the window. “There’s some kind of attachment out there somewhere… It records temperature, precipitation, windspeed, everything. I’ve got years’ worth of data you can look at, if you want. Er, if you’re interested in that sort of thing,” he added, suddenly realizing how lame that sounded.

            “No, that must be very useful,” she assured him. Then she shivered a bit.

            Caleb rushed to grab a fleece throw from the back of the couch and tuck it around her shoulders. “I’m sorry, it does tend to be a bit chilly around here,” he told her apologetically. “I guess I like to keep the temperature down, make up for it with sweaters and warm drinks and so forth… Say, you could probably use some more clothes, couldn’t you?” Her plain trousers and shirt didn’t seem very satisfactory for a climate like this.

            “How do you get things, like clothes, if there’s no door?” she asked, mystified.

            “Oh, it’s terribly easy, you just ask and it appears,” he assured her. “Usually overnight, sometimes by evening if you ask for it early enough.”

            “Oh, well, let’s ask for more clothes, then,” she suggested eagerly. “By tonight would be nice.”

            “Of course!” Caleb felt he could smile a bit now—wanting more clothes must mean she was going to stay, right? “So, if you would just like to come over here, I’ll show you how it’s done.”

            He guided her towards the dining table. “Oh! I interrupted your meal!” she exclaimed when she saw the remains of his toast.

            He saw it at the same moment and exclaimed, “Oh! You must be hungry! No, never mind, it’s fine. Er— _are_ you hungry?”

            “Well, I guess I am,” she decided.

            “Look, uh, why don’t I show you how to order things,” Caleb suggested, trying to think clearly, “and then you can work on that while I make you breakfast.”

            “You don’t have to make me breakfast! I’m sure I could—“

            “No, no, it’s alright,” he insisted. “Would you like toast? Are you allergic to nuts? Or anything else?”

            “Toast would be great,” she answered, “and I’m not allergic to anything.” She smiled at him, and Caleb smiled back. He almost ran off to start her toast before remembering what he was going to show her.

            “Okay, so, here’s a catalog,” he began, kneeling on a chair and leaning precipitously over the table towards her. “It’s so easy, you just flip through it and write down anything you want, anything at all. It’s nice if you can be quite specific—company, item number, size, color. You just write it down on a piece of paper, like this, and then we just post it on that bulletin board over there. And then it shows up.”

            “That’s it?” the woman questioned.

            “That’s it!” Caleb promised. “You can look for things online, too—you brought a computer, didn’t you?—well, you can’t have email and you can’t post on message boards—I mean, it won’t _let_ you—but you can go to any website you want. And you just write down what you want.”

            “What kind of limits are there?” the woman asked, leafing through the LL Bean catalog. “Monetary?”

            “I haven’t found any,” Caleb told her. “I mean, I try not to be wasteful, of course, but I have lots of silly things. Lots more than I need.”

            “Just write it down, huh?” the woman confirmed, obviously having found something she wanted.

            “Yep.” Caleb watched her for a moment, then abruptly remembered he was supposed to be making her toast and hurried back over to the kitchen, a bit awkwardly as he didn’t want to turn his back on her. He also had to fight the urge to keep talking to her; she was trying to _decide_ things, after all. The silence, which had been fairly pleasant in years past, now seemed oppressive to him. He came right back to the table as soon as he’d put the bread in to toast.

            “A lot of these things just look so similar to me,” she commented after a moment.

            “I have other catalogs,” Caleb replied, starting to jump up.

            “No, no, it’s fine, it’s just—say, how is the laundry done around here?” she asked. “Is there a laundry room where I could hand-wash things and hang them to dry, or would I just use my bathroom for that?”

            Caleb did not own anything he had ever needed to wash by hand, but he did know about the laundry. “ _They_ do it,” he told her. “In the night. Well, I have mine done three times a week. At first I had it done every day but then I realized I was just wearing the same things over and over. And they do dry-cleaning, too.”

            “Oh really?” she replied with interest. She wrote a few more neat lines on her piece of paper. “But look at these shirts,” she went on, flipping between two pages of the catalog for him. “I don’t really understand what’s different about them. They even come in similar colors, though they’ve given them different names.”

            “Oh, they’re made out of different materials,” Caleb pointed out, examining the ads closely. “See, this is Supima, which is polyester, and this is Cotton Interlock, which is, well, cotton. I actually like the cotton better—it’s warm but it _breathes_ , if you know what I mean. It keeps you warm when you’re sitting still but doesn’t make you sweat when you get up to do something.” He paused, suddenly feeling embarrassed. “Um, sorry. I… try different things a lot, and compare them.”

            Instead of looking like she found him weird, the woman smiled. “That must be fun! And very useful, too.”

            “Wait’ll you get to the food,” he went on, heartened by her response. The toaster dinged and he went to retrieve her toast. “We can have any dish from any restaurant, as long as the menu is online. This one time, I spent a week trying sushi from about three dozen restaurants around the world. I got _so sick_!” he laughed. “Butter and honey?”

            “That would be nice,” she agreed. “What happens when you get sick here?”

            She sounded worried, so Caleb hastened to reassure her as he prepared her toast. “Oh, well, I just sort of laid on the couch and took some Alka-Seltzer, and didn’t eat seafood for a month,” he clarified. “But I’ve never gotten _really_ sick. Sometimes I feel a bit peaky, but I’ll just stay in bed that day and I’ll be fine by morning.”

            “But what about accidents or injuries?” she pressed. “When you were here all by yourself? I would always worry about falling, or setting something on fire…”

            “No need, really,” he insisted, setting the toast before her. “Everything’s very well-looked-after here. One time I accidentally set a potholder on a burner that was on,” he told her, “or rather, I must have, because when I went back into the kitchen, the potholder was in the sink, with big round scorch marks on it! And the stove had been turned off. I hadn’t even smelled the smoke. _And_ ,” he went on, wanting to reassure her of the safety of their environment, “sometimes I’ve stumbled or slipped, and it’s like—something _catches_ me.” Her eyes widened. “Like the wall or the couch was closer than I thought. Sometimes, yeah, I end up with a few bruises, but nothing serious.”

            “That’s wonderful,” she replied, and her tone was unusually earnest, as if she’d been waiting her whole life to hear such words. Well, maybe she had. “Is this real butter?”

            “Oh, yeah,” Caleb replied happily. “That’s another thing, you can eat whatever you want and you won’t gain weight.”

            Now _this_ truly seemed to be what she’d been waiting her whole life to hear. “ _Really?_ ”

            “Really. But there’s a catch, which is that if you eat a lot of greasy or sugary foods you’ll feel poorly afterwards,” he warned. “But, that’s the only consequence—it’s not that you feel poorly _and_ have gained five pounds. So I like to use real butter and whole milk and regular soda and real sugar—I think it tastes better.”

            “Are dishes like laundry?” she queried, looking at the plates on the table. “And what about other cleaning? And garbage?”

            “All done by _them_ ,” he told her. “Everything gets cleaned and put away in the night—dishes, vacuuming, stuff I’ve left out. Everything out here gets cleaned every day, and in my room it’s three days a week, because every day was just too weird for me.”

            “But how do they clean your room when you’re _in_ it?” she questioned.

            “They do that during the _day_ , when you’re somewhere else,” he clarified. He’d gotten so used to it all that he didn’t realize how much there was to explain. “Like, if I go back to my room now, I’ll find that my bed’s been made.”

            She nodded thoughtfully. For a few moments they were both quiet, though it felt more companionable since they were sitting at the same table. She finished writing her note with satisfaction and looked up eagerly. “So, I just put it on the bulletin board?”

            “Yep,” Caleb confirmed, as they both stood. “Hmm, maybe we should put your name on it just—“ He froze in horror. “What _is_ your name?”

            She flushed, seeming equally embarrassed at the oversight. “Lily,” she finally answered. “Um, and…?”

            “Caleb,” he replied quickly.

            She smiled then, and so did he, which made things seem much better. He walked her over to the bulletin board and handed her a thumbtack, which she used to post the list. It was strangely _not_ anticlimactic, though Caleb found himself at a slight loss as to what to do next.

            Then he spotted his single-item grocery list. “Oh, you should look around the kitchen and put whatever food you want on this list,” he encouraged. “It’s best to be as specific as possible, brands even. For ideas I usually look at online grocery sellers, or sometimes I get circulars from grocery stores.”

            “What a good idea!” Lily agreed. Still, she seemed a little hesitant. “Do you mind if I, er, look in the fridge?”

            “Oh, go ahead,” he insisted. “Say, what do you want for dinner tonight?” Caleb opened one of the filing cabinet drawers below the desk and rifled through the folders in it. “I usually have Italian on Wednesdays…” He produced a print-out of a menu. “There’s this really good place called Nino’s, in Abruzzi, that I like to order from—er, do you like Italian?”

            “I love Italian,” Lily assured him, taking the menu. She frowned after a moment, though. “Oh… it’s _in_ Italian.”

            “Oh, right, I forgot,” Caleb apologized. “Um, I could find another place, or—“

            “Do you speak Italian?” Lily asked with interest.

            “I’m afraid I don’t _speak_ it well,” Caleb admitted, “but I can read it. Here, um, this is a really good angelhair pasta with mussels, and this is chicken parmesan…”

            “I’d really like to try their cheese ravioli,” Lily decided.

            Caleb grabbed a pad of paper and scribbled down her order. “Marinara or meat sauce?”

            “Marinara.”

            “Do you—are you a vegetarian?” he asked curiously.

            “No, I like meat,” she assured him. “But when it comes to pasta, I don’t want to lose out on any cheese!”

            He thought that seemed reasonable. “Do you want soup or a salad or anything?”

            “I think I’d like a salad,” Lily told him, watching him write. “With Italian dressing. Oh, and—you know what I really like? When they give you olive oil and parmesan cheese, and you can dip your bread in that. Do you think we could have some of that?”

            “Absolutely,” Caleb grinned, pleased to be able to accommodate her. “You want garlic bread, too?”

            “Yes,” Lily replied eagerly. “I really love bread, too, actually,” she admitted with a sigh. “Bread, and cheese, and chocolate.”

            “Which brings up to dessert,” Caleb pointed out. He dug around in the menu drawer again. “The Ghirardelli shop in San Francisco has the _best_ brownies ever…”

            “You can order from more than one place per meal?” Lily wondered, obviously impressed. She took the Ghirardelli menu from him and perused it hungrily.

            “Of course! Every dish from a different continent, if you want,” Caleb promised.

            Lily peeked at the dinner order he’d written. “It seems like a lot of food,” she worried.

            “I usually eat the leftovers for lunch the next day,” Caleb told her. Which reminded him. “There’s some leftover steak you can have for lunch if you want,” he offered generously.

            “Oh, no, I couldn’t—“ Lily protested.

            “No, it’s fine,” Caleb assured her, posting the dinner order. “There’s plenty of other food here. I’ll make a sandwich or something.”

            “I guess I’m a big interruption in your routine,” Lily sighed, adding her groceries to the list.

            “A welcome one,” Caleb insisted sincerely. “And if I get a little too—if I seem set in my ways, just tell me so, it’s okay. It’s just, I need to have some structure, really, some kind of routine,” he admitted. “It helps a lot. I got—really depressed after I’d been here about a month. Lying in bed all day, doing nothing. It was—not good.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, now I know I need to get up at the same time, go to bed on time, eat at the same time, have some kind of plan. I mean, not that _you_ need to do that at all,” he insisted. “Whatever works for you.”

            Lily smiled at him. “I think it all sounds lovely so far,” she told him warmly. “Safe, and cozy, and… did you know Italian before?”

            “No, I learned since I came here,” Caleb replied, more comfortable with this topic. “I’ve learned Spanish, Italian, and German since coming here. Like I said, I’m not very good at speaking them, but I practice by reading websites and magazines. I’m working on Japanese right now.”

            It occurred to him suddenly that he might sound like he was bragging, but Lily seemed fascinated. “I’ve always wanted to learn another language,” she revealed. “Maybe I’ll work on Spanish. What else do you do around here?”

            “Well, come on, let me give you a tour,” Caleb offered, though ‘tour’ was a bit grand for the area. “This is the kitchen, of course—do you cook?”

            “Not really,” Lily admitted.

            “Me, neither,” Caleb agreed. “Sometimes I like to try, though… Not much point cooking for just _one_. Anyway, I’ve got a lot of gadgets, so feel free to use whatever is here—here’s the coffee machine, it’s the kind with the little cups so you can have whatever flavor you want, or tea or cocoa, too. And there’s an espresso machine, smoothie maker, one of those George Foreman grills…”

            “It would be fun to try those sometime,” Lily agreed.

            “Right. So, there’s the hallway to your room—I presume it’s set up more or less like mine, you can get whatever you want for it,” Caleb pointed out.

            “There was another door down the hall…” Lily mentioned leadingly.

            “It’s locked,” Caleb said. “But I think it has another set of rooms like yours. There’s a locked door in my hallway, too—one time I broke into it and it was a set of rooms like my own, so I assume it’s the same on your side.” Lily nodded and Caleb drew her more towards the fireplace. “Watch the stairs here,” he warned.

            “Is this a real fireplace?” she asked, peering at the screen.

            “Well, it’s gas,” he admitted. “I had a wood-burning one for a little while, but the novelty kind of wore off… They’re a lot of work, actually. But we’ve got a nice telly here, with DirecTV, all the channels you could want. I don’t really watch it a lot, though. I hate commercials,” he added. “Mostly I Tivo stuff, or watch DVDs. Um, both regular and Blu-Ray players here, satellite radio, CD player—oh, there’s a lovely sound system, little speakers hidden everywhere,” he pointed out. “All this stuff was here when I got here.”

            “I think I saw some of these things in my room, too,” Lily interjected. “It seems a little—redundant.”

            “Well, less so now that there’s two of us!” Caleb countered, enjoying the ‘two of us’ part. “In case we want to watch different things. I’ve also got a couple of video game systems… There’s a Wii there. Absolutely use them whenever you want. I don’t play them a _lot_ —I get in the mood sometimes, though. So, here’s the dining table,” he went on, hopping back out of the sunken living area. He gestured towards the doorway on this wall. “That’s the way to my room…” He felt suddenly shy about showing it to her. “It’s—kind of cluttered, actually,” he told her apologetically. “I’m an artist—well, I mean, I like to draw and paint, and the extra room is kind of my studio, I guess. It’s really full… One thing I’m kind of lacking in is storage space, really.” The hallway that led to his bedroom was rather full as well, with paintings, the Christmas tree, appliances that didn’t fit in the kitchen anymore but that he _might_ still use, other random items. He had so far avoided filling the other hallway—Lily’s hallway—with boxes and canvases, and now he was quite glad of that. He was seeing the house through new eyes now, and it wasn’t really coming out that well, in his opinion. And he was about to hit the worst of it. “And over here is…”

            “Oh! _Books_!” Lily breathed reverently. The main room was just as large on the far side of the fireplace, with an identical window wall showing an identical blank view. For no particular reason Caleb had always thought of that as the ‘front’ of the house, though since it wasn’t the end with the kitchen, dining table, or doorway to his bedroom, he tended to be in it less. Hence why he had started filling it with bookcases. Now there were a ridiculous number of them, in his eyes, blocking the window, cluttering up the space. And all to hold—“Are all these _yours_?” Lily asked, with delight.

            “Yes, I guess so,” Caleb admitted, feeling rather embarrassed. “I mean, of course, you can read them whenever you want,” he added quickly. “They’re sort of—sort of _ours_ , really.” Then he felt embarrassed for calling them ‘ours,’ as if he and Lily were some sort of couple when she’d only just arrived, and he hurried to add, “I like to read, and there’s lots of time for it here—it’s a nice place for reading.”

            If Lily noticed his discomfort, she didn’t say anything about it. “But you haven’t _read_ all of these books?” she asked, excitedly perusing the shelves.

            Caleb leaned on one bookcase, out of her way. “I have, actually.”

            She stared at him. “But there must be _hundreds_ of books here!”

            Caleb nodded. He didn’t want to sound like he was bragging—like maybe he had with the foreign languages—but it occurred to him that it might be hard for Lily to grasp just exactly how much time there was to fill. “I’ve read them all,” he reiterated casually. “Well, not the dictionaries, really, but I’ve read everything else, even the encyclopedia.”

            Lily seemed quite impressed, but also slightly troubled, as if she were calculating just how many hours this reading would have taken. Well, good; Caleb was desperate that she not leave, of course, but she ought to understand what she was getting into. “What are these?” she finally asked, reaching for a series of composition notebooks on one shelf.

            Caleb leaped forward suddenly, then pulled back, clearly wanting to stop her from touching them but not wanting to be rude about it. His strange action was enough to still her hand, though. “Those are kind of like—er, they’re things I’ve written, like reviews of books I’ve read, or about interesting articles from magazines—um, kind of like journals, really—“

            “Oh,” Lily said, pulling back from them. “How wonderful that you write all that down!”

            Caleb still felt flustered. “Yes—er—I could move them,” he offered. “Back to my room. Didn’t really matter when it was just me, but—“ Well, he didn’t want Lily to think that he didn’t _trust_ her not to read them. “—perhaps you’d like more room?” he offered lamely.

            She turned to him and smiled a little, and for a moment Caleb forgot what they’d been talking about. “I love to read, too,” she finally said, “and I like to write about what I’ve read, too.” Caleb smiled back, sensing her understanding.

            “There’s lots of DVDs and CDs over here, too,” he pointed out, directing her to the shelves on the other side of the room. “And a few magazines. Oh, and there’s these, you can use them if you like.” He indicated the stationary bicycle and rowing machine that were crammed in between the bookcases, facing a small TV.

            “You like to exercise?” Lily asked pleasantly.

            Caleb shrugged. “Well, I do about thirty minutes once a week,” he told her. “Like I said with the food, it doesn’t really help with losing weight or anything, but it makes me feel better overall. I can tell if I’ve skipped a week, I start feeling rather rundown.” He paused, looking around. “Well, that’s it, really,” he finally shrugged. “It’s—it’s not much, really. But, I dunno, I kind of like it.”

            Lily looked around as well, a satisfied expression on her face. Then she turned to Caleb again. “I think I will, too!” she decided.

**

            Two weeks later, Caleb sat at the counter in the kitchen, waiting for his breakfast. Lily had been on a pancake-making spree lately and stood at the stove, watching the browning flapjack with great concentration. They had tried four different mixes so far and Lily seemed determined to continue until the world’s best pancake mix was discovered. Caleb didn’t mind at all, which surprised him somewhat; but right now, the novelty of having someone else to talk to and eat with far outweighed the break in his breakfast routine it had caused.

            “Okay, I think these are going to be good,” Lily decided critically. “The batter has a very good consistency, not too runny, and the blueberries didn’t burn this time.” Caleb duly made note of his judgment and accepted the plate Lily handed him. She watched closely while he took a bite.

            “Yeah, it’s really good,” he announced, digging in. “It’s not as sweet as the one yesterday, but it’s _richer_ , I think.”

            “Mmm-hmm,” Lily remarked thoughtfully, scribbling this down.

            A few minutes later all the pancakes had been made and Lily’s plate sat on the counter next to Caleb’s, waiting for her as she put a few things away. She had to do things right away, she said, or she would forget about them entirely and wander off. Caleb didn’t really see the problem there—things would get put away and cleaned _for_ them—but he didn’t protest; Lily was still getting used to things here.

            She scooped up some of the mail and deposited it on the counter between them as she sat down, leaving the packages behind for the moment. She had been filling out her wardrobe recently, so the boxes were a bit large. Caleb helped to sort through the magazines and catalogs—they shared most things, as it made no sense to have two subscriptions of, say, _National Geographic_ coming in, but obviously Lily was more interested in the newspaper she’d ordered from her own hometown, or in the catalog of only women’s clothing.

            “What’s this?” Lily asked suddenly, picking up a golden-yellow piece of paper. In cheerful, old-fashioned font it proclaimed, “LEAN TIMES are coming! Stock up now!” And that was it. No brand names, no store name, no fine print even. “Is it—a sales flier, or—“

            “I know what this is,” Caleb said, blinking at it dully for a moment. “I just didn’t realize it was getting so late,” he went on slowly. “I just lost track of… And the weather has been… Hmm.”

            “But _what_ does ‘Lean Times’ mean?” Lily asked him, a bit impatiently. All those years of living alone had made Caleb prone to trailing off instead of completing his thoughts aloud. “Who is this from?”

            “Well, it’s from— _them_ ,” Caleb tried to explain. “See, Lean Times happens every year, in the month or so between Thanksgiving and Christmas.” And it was now early November, which he had somehow missed. “All it means is that the deliveries slow down, stop really. Oh, and the weather gets really bad, not that it matters.”

            “What do you mean, the deliveries _stop_?” Lily asked with some alarm. “Don’t they—they stop _watching_ us?” She seemed to take great comfort in the daily reminders that someone was looking after them.

            “No, no, no,” Caleb assured her. “The cleaning and everything still happens every day. It’s just the deliveries. And that’s why they warn us, so we can stock up on food and books and supplies now.” She still looked rather nervous. “Come on, it’s fun!” he tried to tell her. “We’ll plan out what we want to eat for that month—we can try some cooking and baking! And that’s also when I finally dig things out of the cabinets and eat them.”

            “But why do they do it?” Lily persisted, consuming her pancakes with less enjoyment now. “I don’t understand…”

            Caleb shrugged. “Well, I don’t really know _why_ ,” he admitted. “But it’s the only time of year they have _activities_ , so maybe that has something to do with it.”

            “Activities?”

            “Oh yeah, there’s something every week,” Caleb explained. “We’ll get more fliers about them. But first there’s Donation Day, when they encourage you to give back things you haven’t used much—clothes or books you didn’t like, for example, that are still in good condition. Not that you’ve probably got much of that,” he allowed, as she had only just arrived, “but I’ve got a box of stuff. Really you can just send it back any time of year, but I like to wait to make sure I really want to give it up. Oh, and you can also give them things you’ve made,” he added with some excitement. “I’ve donated some of my paintings and drawings… they always say how they give them to people, or sell them for charity or something.”

            “Oh. Hmm,” Lily replied, not quite seeing the interest there.

            “And there’s the Catalog Challenge,” Caleb remembered, trying to drum up enthusiasm. “That’s fun. They give you these random catalogs, see, and you have to pick out three things that you want, or a hundred dollars’ worth or something. That’s to introduce people to new hobbies,” he explained, finally putting his years of speculation to use. “I guess they get stuck in a rut sometimes.”

            “Well, but I don’t understand why they have to stop deliveries for that,” Lily fretted, picking at her breakfast now.

            “Um… maybe it’s an appreciation thing,” Caleb guessed. “Take it away for a while, so people appreciate it more when they come back.”

            “I appreciate it,” Lily murmured dejectedly.

            “Come on,” Caleb encouraged, not wanting to see her upset. “It’ll be fun! We’ll plan out what we want to eat for that month—what we want to make. And we’ll have a big Thanksgiving feast right before it all starts—I don’t really fancy turkey myself, so I usually get a big ham, and maybe some roast beef…” He was making himself hungry with these thoughts, and not really convincing Lily of anything. “Um, they also have an Introspection Day,” he recalled, “where they give you all these personality tests and surveys to fill out, and ask you all these questions about how you like it here and what you’ve learned over the year.” Which reminded him—“Oh, and the last thing is Resolution Day!”

            “Like a New Year’s resolution?” Lily ventured, with weak interest.

            “Exactly!” Caleb agreed. “You write down something big you want to do over the next year—like learn a new language or read a hundred books or ride five miles on the bike at a stretch.” Those were all goals he had set in the past. “Then, you pick out a reward you think you should get, if you complete your resolution. So this year, they’ll also give me back my resolution from last year and ask me if I think I fulfilled it.”

            “Hmm,” Lily replied inscrutably.

            “You know, to give people goals to work towards,” Caleb continued, in case that wasn’t obvious. “Um, and _then_ —then, you wake up on Christmas morning, and it’s a beautiful day—well, still cold, but sunny at least—and there’s a Christmas feast, all the stuff you’ve dreamed of all month, and there’s presents under the tree that they’ve picked from your wish lists, and…” He trailed off suddenly, staring vacantly at the ceiling.

            “Caleb?” Lily prompted after a long moment.

            He shook his head. “Sorry, I was just—Well, I was just thinking that I always used to look forward to all that,” he said slowly, “and now I’m thinking back on it and it just seems kind of—sad. Because it was just… me.” He toyed idly with his fork, a little embarrassed at how lonely he sounded. He didn’t want Lily to feel like he was dependent on her to keep him company.

            “Oh,” Lily said, and Caleb really wished he hadn’t mentioned anything at all. “I think—I think Christmas sounds like fun,” she went on, and it sounded fairly sincere. “I just—got used to everything being very regular, that’s all.”

            “Oh, it is, the whole rest of the year,” Caleb promised. “You just arrived at kind of an odd time, is all. And I would’ve mentioned it earlier, but I lost track of time…”

            “So… there’s a Christmas tree?” Lily asked after a moment, and Caleb’s mood lightened.

            “Sure! I’ve got it tucked away, but we can get it out whenever you want,” he offered. “If you want other decorations, we’d better get them soon. And, er, presents for each other. Oh, and you need a stocking!”

            “I _do_ like Christmas a lot,” Lily affirmed, starting to perk up. “Maybe we could get some lights to put around the windows…”

**

            It was _not_ a typical morning for Caleb, given that it was about three AM and he was being awakened by Lily knocking on his door and pushing her way into his bedroom. “Caleb! The power’s out!” she announced frantically, standing at his bedside huddled in her thick robe. “The house is _cold_!”

            The icy blast of air Caleb felt as he sat up helped to wake him. “Yeah, that happens sometimes,” he assured her. “During Lean Times, anyway.”

            Lily did not find this comforting. “But the _power_ is _out_!” she repeated. “It’s _cold_! We’ll _freeze_!” The wind from the storm raging outside howled as it buffeted the house, seeming to agree with her.

            “No, it’s fine, we’ll be okay,” Caleb tried to tell her. “It’ll be back on when we wake up, I’m sure.” When they woke up _again_ , that is.

            “It’s just—I don’t—It reminds me of—“ Lily sputtered in frustration and fear.

            “What does it remind you of?” Caleb asked, curious.

            She shook her head a little. “Just—all the things I left behind,” she finally replied quietly.

            He thought for a moment, then started to scoot over in the bed. “Do you want to—Look, it’s warm here,” he pointed out, patting his mattress. “Do you want to sleep here for a while? Just until the power is back on?”

            She hesitated for a moment. It wasn’t that a line was being crossed, just redrawn, and she didn’t want to leap into that without thinking. But she also didn’t want to go back to her cold bed, alone, in the storm. Caleb gazed at her patiently. “Okay,” she decided, crawling under the covers. It _was_ a lot warmer.


End file.
